Who We Are
Paraphrasing Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart,”
we used to be somebody and now we are somebody else.
  • Josh Hammond, CEO, Co-Creator, Editor
  • Boz Zashev, Co-Creator, Publisher, Designer
  • Lynn McCormick, Associate Publisher, Managing Editor
  • Geoff Carter, Contributor, Creator of Dispatches from the Isle of Man
  • Eric Marturano, Contributor, Millennial Watch Dog, Song Man

You will notice, if you haven’t already, we generally have no by-lines for our post. We develop our editorial as a team with a lead writer. We believe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Josh Hammond and Boz Zashev are co-creators of FreeAmericanNews. Although continents apart, they have worked together since the early days of blogging. Their first blog generated over 3 million hits on some of their posts and it was popular in progressive circles, now a vanishing breed on the public stage. That was before social media enabled internet users to reach bigger audiences. More recently they designed and managed a fun lifestyle online magazine about whisky, women and song, ending with WhiskyMoods.com, now dormant, but there for the record.

Josh brings substantial editorial and visual experience to FreeAmericansNews. Two of his books have been published including The Stuff Americans Are Made Of (Macmillan), a cultural look at business competitiveness worldwide. He designed and managed an annual editorial project for Fortune magazine that ran for a dozen years. Geoff Carter was Josh’s counterpart in Europe for a good number of years. Josh was a senior legislative assistant in the US Senate and director of Communications for the Nixon White House Drug Abuse Prevention Office.

Josh was in the forefront of key public policy issues including drug abuse prevention and treatment, the expansion of community colleges, wellness and global business competitiveness. He was president of the American Quality Foundation and president of the Public Advertising Center whose work was systematically evaluated for effectiveness by the Annenberg School of Communications at USC.

Boz lives in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It’s all virtual in his world. Boz and I think alike and push each other’s limits for something new. He is a software product designer with over 30 software products. His clients have included Reuters, Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young and the higher education strategists, The Tambellini Group. Boz understands nine languages, most of the computer ones, so he has us covered.

With the gun control debate in a new cycle, Josh had a .22 when he was ten years old and hasn’t advanced much in his firing skills, but Boz was winner of a national sharp-shooting competition with the Russian Kalashnikov while serving almost two years in the army. This is how they work together: they inform each other based on experience, so they are more apt to get the posts off to a good start.

Lynn is from the fly-over part of the US.  She was born in Chicago, went to the University of Michigan (Go Blue) and earned MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. She spent the majority of her professional life in financial services, working in Chicago, New York and London. Most recently, she was Managing Director at a major Wall Street firm, serving as Global Chief Administrative Officer for one of its seven divisions. Since leaving Wall Street, she has turned her creative energy and skills to a variety of community activities. Lynn has served as both a financial advisor and board member for a number of non-profit organizations over the past several years, including serving as a board member for Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. (Settlement was recently named one of the top ten charities in the country working to preserve and expand music education and access to the musical arts by Charity Navigator blog.) Lynn is also active on the Finance Committee of her local church, visits sick kids in the hospital with her Therapy Dog Tiffany, a yellow lab and she is taking piano lessons. Her Barók and Beethoven are sounding better every week.

Geoff is our man in Europe although you might bump into him in China, Australia, South Africa, Brussels, or the South of France where he spends a good deal of his time, cycling and drinking the local stuff. Home is the Isle of Man, a small island in the Irish Sea betwixt Scotland, Wales and England and within a pint or two from Ireland on a ferry. Geoff ups the ante on the expression “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” In his case, it’s what happened at a Swiss monastic retreat where he presented a workshop to a group of pastors on the subject of customer satisfaction: what happens in the Swiss Alps stays in the Alps. Geoff’s degree is in telecoms electronics, gained at a time when transistors were all the rage and the only “chips” he knew about were what he had with battered fish, salt and vinegar. He is an Arsenal Football Club addict by choice, and the sexiest job title he has ever had was as Chargé de Mission, when he worked for the prestigious European Foundation for Quality Management. His wit, analysis and world view should keeps us Yanks on the ball.

Eric is our Millennial Watch Dog, Philosopher Prince and Song Man. You’ll find many of his regular editorial contributions at the Greek Choruses on many of our posts. He graduated from Boston College with a major in philosophy and marketing, giving him a unique understanding of why marketing works and how consumers will react. You’ll see some of that blend in his writing. He was born with a keyboard in one hand and a basketball in the other. There is a natural and contagious rhythm to everything he does. He just earned his MBA from Villanova while he kept his cheers up for Nova’s second national basketball championship in three years, taking Lynn’s team down in the final this year. He is a marketing specialist whose clients have included American Express and now a number of pharmaceutical companies. He’d rather be doing his Podcast about professional sports, Two Paisani and a Pizza Podcast.

If you are interested to joining the team or writing a guest post, contact us a editors@freeamericannews.com.